Why a decent image matters…

For lots of psychological reasons that are beyond my expertise, humans are attracted to colourful and interesting images.

• Can you imagine how much more difficult it would be to read a newspaper that doesn’t have any photographs in it?
• Do you tend to avoid reading articles online that have zero images?
• When you see a Powerpoint presentation, do you prefer one with lots of text? Or lots of pictures/diagrams?

Even if you don’t consider yourself to be a visual person, you will always be attracted to photos and images, even if it’s subconciously. There’s a reason that all big-money advertising uses carefully-considered imagery in the adverts that they produce.

On social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – using imagery will essentially help you stand out from the (considerable) noise, increasing the probability your content will get seen and clicked on.

Why you SHOULD set up images for pages on your website…

Even if YOU personally do not share links to pages on your website on the social networks, your customers and visitors will still share links to your website. That’s why you want to control what images (and text) are associated with your pages! Thankfully, it’s all fairly easy to do, and I’m going to explain exactly how to do it in the second half of this article.

Let’s see what happens when we don’t set up images properly…

Example 1 – Facebook – Where the main image is broken.

In this example, Facebook found an image, but couldn’t load it properly, and just showed a grey block. Clearly this doesn’t look very good at all, and makes it rather obvious that something is broken.

Example 2 – Facebook again, but the image is really small and has been cropped into a really small square.

The image I chose for this example is a really small image (300px x 200px), and is therefore too small for Facebook to stretch to the full width of the newsfeed. Therefore it’s cropped the image (made it smaller) to fit a small square. If Facebook cannot find an image for the article, sometimes it will use a logo or another image that it can find elsewhere on the page.

Example 3 – LinkedIn – where a really small image has been stretched and pixelated.

LinkedIn behaves slightly differently to Facebook, and it has stretched a small image to the full width of the newsfeed. By stretching a small image to fill a larger space, it’s created a pixelated image, where you’ll see the blockiness. Using images that are stretched like this will give a poor impression too, as it gives the impression of low quality.

Example 4 – Facebook – a good example, high resolution image, of the right dimensions.

This is what a good quality image looks like on Facebook. You’ll see that it fits the full width, no blockiness, and it looks really neat. This is the actual image I’ve assigned to the Transforming A Testimonial blog post on WP Doctors.

As the image is a high resolution image, it will automatically be resized by Facebook to look great on desktops, tablets and mobile phones.

Example 5 – LinkedIn – a good example, high resolution image, of the right dimensions.

This time on LinkedIn, you’ll see very similar, just without the description of the link below the image.

Example 6 – Twitter – again, same link, same photo…

Now we’re on Twitter. See how the layout is very similar to both LinkedIn and Facebook? So you’re now seeing that when we make the effort for just one platform, we don’t need to do anything special for the others. The platforms all use the same information… and I’ll show you how to do this in the next section.

How Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter pick the image when you share a link

So here’s the good news… the work you need to make your chosen image work with Facebook, is exactly the same for Twitter and LinkedIn. Once you have the right photo, it takes about a minute per page to make this all work!

Techie Note: The social networks make use of something called Open Graph tags to detect what image and text to show when the link to your article is shared on social media. We’re going to use a WordPress plugin to automatically create and manipulate these tags to show our images (and text)

Step 1: For the image to work on all platforms, I recommend an image sized 1200 pixels wide by 630 pixels high. This image size will work perfectly on all 3 social media platforms when set as the main social image for a page (or blog post).

Step 2: You’ll need a plugin for WordPress that allows you to set the social images for each page on the website. I personally use and recommend Yoast SEO (a.k.a WordPress SEO), as it’s free and does the job (and other things) brilliantly. There are other plugins for WordPress that allow you to set the images for your website, but I’m going to focus on the Yoast SEO plugin, as it’s been my favourite for years.

Step 3 – Option A: Assuming that your WordPress theme doesn’t rely on the featured image for anything, Yoast SEO will use the featured image on a page for the social image. (Ask your developer to check for you).

Quick Note: When we create a WordPress theme for clients, we design the theme to take advantage of the social image (1200x630px) throughout the website. This means our clients only need to find one image for a page or blog article, and it’s used on the rest of the website.

Step 3 – Option B: If you can’t use the featured image for any reason, then use Yoast SEO to set your image. Look for the sharing tab (which has 3 dots and 2 lines), then set the image in the ‘Facebook Image‘ section.

Setting a default image for your pages…

Now, as you can imagine, setting the image for every single page on your website is time consuming! Thankfully, Yoast SEO provides a way for you to provide a default image that will be used if the image for a page hasn’t been set.

For my default image, I’ve chosen a picture of me, my brand name and my tagline. So if someone shares any page on my website that I’ve not chosen an image for, essentially they’ll be promoting my business/website.

Forcing the image to update… an introduction

A question that’s very commonly asked… how do you refresh the image that’s being shown on any of the big 3 networks? You’ll see specific instructions below… but if you’re testing images, I recommend using the Facebook method for testing, as it’s the easiest to refresh.

Forcing the image to update… Facebook

Step 1 – Find Facebook’s debug tool https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/ (you can Google for it by searching “Facebook debug tool”).

Step 2 – Enter the URL of your website, and click on the ‘Debug‘ button.

Step 3 – Click on the ‘Scrape Again‘ button.

Forcing the image to update… Twitter

Step 1 – Visit: https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator (you’ll need to be logged in to Twitter to use this tool)

Step 2 – Enter the URL of the web page you want to refresh, and click on the ‘Preview Card‘ button. By clicking on ‘Preview Card’, it will update the Twitter cache at the same time with the latest version of your image.

Forcing the image to update… LinkedIn

Unfortunately, when you share a link on LinkedIn, it caches the image for 7 days. That means if you change the image on your website, LinkedIn will ignore the update for a week. There’s no way to force an update if you’ve changed the image. You’ve just got to wait.

The only solution for checking you’ve got the newer image working properly on LinkedIn:

• Your original URL: http://www.domain.com/
• The new version, that we’ve changed slightly: http://www.domain.com/?1 or http://www.domain.com/?2, etc

Essentially, LinkedIn sees the new URL http://www.domain.com/?1 as a brand new web page, and therefore will just fetch the latest version of details from your page.

What images work best?

Finding great images for blog articles is tricky, as the best images are ones that you create yourself. The trouble is, most stock images are dull and feel very artificial (particularly images that contain people).

Why you just can’t use any image from Google Image Search?

This is a very common mistake made by business owners… the reason is because you’re at risk of being sued for copyright infringement or not having the right licence to use the image. Every so often, you hear about a business getting a nasty letter from some lawyers asking for a ransom payment. It’s rare, but entirely possible.

Some ideas for creating your own images:

• Idea 1 – Get a selfie of yourself with an object or doing something silly – if it’s you taking the photo
• Idea 2 – Draw a diagram, and take a photo of your diagram with your phone or camera (e.g. above)
• Idea 3 – Use some software (e.g. Canva) to create your image from scratch (but you can use stock images here, but customise the image using this tool)
• Idea 4 – Hire a designer (e.g. Fiverr.com, PeoplePerHour.com) to create your image from scratch

If you do use stock images, then stick to the following rules:

• • Ensure that you’re using an image that has a free or paid Commercial Use licence (click here to search for examples on Google)
  • Choose an image that’s interesting and offbeat, rather than clichéd and dull (such as the free photo above from Pexels.com).
  • See if you can customise the image, such as with Canva – e.g. adding captions

(such as below)

In Conclusion

There’s a lot to this article, but let’s simplify it all:

• Use images – they make linking to your website on social media far more interesting (and professional)
• Ensure that images are 1200 pixels (wide) x 630 pixels (high)
• Use WordPress SEO or a similar tool with WordPress to set the social images.
• Do it for Facebook you’ll cover the other big 2 social networks (Twitter, LinkedIn)
• Avoid stock images, or use Canva to customise them if you’re rubbish at taking photos!
• Take your own photos to create interesting and licence-free images

The post Using an image to get more clicks to your website from LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter appeared first on The WordPress Doctors.

If you want some ideas for getting GREAT testimonials from your clients, then see my suggestions at the end of the article. For now, let’s focus on how a testimonial is presented.

Step 1 – Our Testimonial

First of all, let’s start with a bog-standard testimonial that includes someone’s name, their company name, and the testimonial itself. Now I’ve used “Lorem Ipsum” here (what is Lorem Ipsum?) so that we can focus on how to improve the appearance of the testimonial.

[demo_testimonial class=”” /]

It’s clear and easy to read, but it’s not exciting is it? Well, this is what most businesses have on their website when showing a testimonial! So let’s start making some improvements.

Step 2 – Let’s add a photo of our client

[demo_testimonial class=”show_photo” /]

Now that we’ve added a photo to the testimonial, the testimonial looks significantly more interesting… partly because you have a photo to look at, and partly due to adding a splash of colour. Given that my photo is looking right at you, I suspect you would have subconsciously looked directly at the eye-level of the photo.

Step 3 – Let’s add a headline

[demo_testimonial class=”show_photo show_title” /]

The idea of a headline for a testimonial is to pick out the best part of the testimonial, so that if your website visitors do not read the body of the testimonial, it’s likely they’ll skim-read the titles of your testimonials to get a feel of what the testimonials all say (about you and your business).

If you look away and then look at this testimonial, you’ll probably find your eyes are drawn to the headline and photo interchangeably.

Step 4 – Let’s highlight the text in the copy

[demo_testimonial class=”show_photo show_title show_bold” /]

I used a headline in the testimonial block to catch the eye of the reader. We can do something similar with the testimonial body, by choose 1 to 3 parts of the text to make bold too. To ensure that you’re picking something worth reading, only pick out the interesting phrases to make them bold. And only select 1, 2 or 3 phrases, otherwise if there’s too much bold text, the text stops being as readable again.

Step 5 – Let’s use some colour (rather than grey)

[demo_testimonial class=”show_photo show_title show_bold show_colour” /]

Finally, let’s add some colour. I’ve switched the colours to use one of my website’s colours. Whilst for some people, reading white text on green might be difficult, the testimonial does suddenly become more interesting by choosing a very striking colour. I’m using a simple design trick here that uses colour to add emphasis, and now the original testimonial (below) looks completely dull by contrast!

[demo_testimonial class=”” /]

Let’s Play! Use the slider to see how the testimonial is transformed…

[demo_testimonial_slider class=”play” /]
[demo_testimonial class=”play” /]

Testimonial Tricks – How to get GREAT testimonials…

Asking a client or customer for a testimonial can feel awkward, as it feels as if you’re hassling them for something when you’d much prefer they just offered to give you a great testimonial. Sometimes, your customers will lack confidence in their ability to write (or write well), and may avoid offering to write you a testimonial to avoid feeling self-conscious.

So how do you solve this?

Option 1 – Write the testimonial for them (and have them check it)…

The easiest way to do this is chatting to your client or customer just after you’ve done something for them… and ideally at a point where they’re really chuffed with what you’ve done for them. Ask them questions:

• what they liked from working with you…
• what results they got…
• what expectations they had and how you exceeded them…
• their favourite part of working with you
• what surprised them

Make lots of notes, and then use those notes and write a well-worded testimonial that conveys the message that you want to convey.

Email the testimonial to them, and ask them to check it and make any edits that they want. Often they’ll say “yeah, that’s perfect” or they’ll make some small adjustments.

Option 2 – Send them a list of questions to answer…

If you have a client or customer who wants to use their own words, you can help them along a bit by giving them some questions to answer (such as those above in Option 1). You can then made any edits to the testimonial (if needed) and then ask them to approve the changes.

At the end of the day, if your client or customer approves the testimonials and it’s truthful, then it’s completely legitimate and legal to use that testimonial in your marketing.

Want help creating great-looking testimonials for your website?

If you’d like to have great-looking testimonials like ours, then please just get in touch via our contact page.

The post Transforming A Dull Business Testimonial Into Something Special… appeared first on The WordPress Doctors.

This article is all about showing business owners like you that it’s very much worthwhile having a SSL certificate for your website, so that your website works over HTTPS rather than HTTP. Fundamentally it’s all about security, but as you’ll see, there are other tangible benefits to your business too.

A quick word on jargon

It’s easy to confuse the terms SSL and HTTPS, so let’s solve that right now and get them explained.

SSL – this acronym stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It’s a name that describes the technology involved in encrypting information sent between your website and your customers’s web browser. The information sent to and from your customer’s web browser is encrypted to make it much more difficult for would-be ‘hackers’ from grabbing that information and doing something with it.

SSL Certificate – this is something you purchase or generate that is unique to your website. It’s a special ‘key’ that allows data to be encrypted between your website and your customer’s browser. Only your website is able to read the data encrypted with your SSL certificate, no other website can read the data that’s been encrypted with your SSL certificate. This is where the security comes from.

HTTP – this stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. This is the technology that allows your website’s server to send images and text via the internet to your customer’s web browser.

HTTPS – this Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure – and extends HTTP in such a way to use the SSL ‘black box’ for encryption.

Essentially HTTP and HTTPS are the couriers of data over the internet, and SSL is a locked black box where data is encrypted and secured.

How SSL certificates are added to a website…

Most websites are set up as HTTP (unencrypted), as it’s the most basic service available on a web server. You can upgrade your website to HTTPS (encrypted) by purchasing a SSL certificate, and then to have it installed on your website or server. The installation is usually done by your web hosting company, as it requires some technical server changes that only they’re able to do.

There’s an annual fee for the SSL certificate, and then often there’s an installation fee from the hosting company. The fees you pay here are on top of your usual web hosting, which is why most business owners opt for the free option of just having HTTP rather than HTTPS.

In the last couple of years, a service has popped up called Let’s Encrypt. This service allows you to generate your own SSL certificate for free. Many web hosting companies now support this technology, meaning you can easily add SSL to your website with no additional fees. There are advantages to paying for an SSL certificate rather than using the free Let’s Encrypt version, but I’ll cover that later.

Let’s get on to the reasons why businesses really should have SSL support on their website…

Reason 1 – You are protecting the privacy of your visitors

Fundamentally, HTTPS protects data sent between your visitor’s web browser and your website by using encryption.

With cybercrime growing all the time, using HTTPS makes it dramatically more difficult for would-be attachers to snoop or steal data from your visitors.

Reason 2 – The Chrome Browser highlights non-HTTPs websites as ‘Not secure’

This change to the Chrome web browser has been on the cards for a while, and is due to be live in July 2018 (reference). Essentially this becomes a ‘name and shame’ label for websites that haven’t yet set up a SSL certificate fo their website. That means that your prospects and website visitors are going to visit your website and see the ‘Not secure‘ status in the URL bar (if they’re using the Chrome web browser). Other web browsers (such as Firefox, Safari) will follow suit if they’ve not already done so, therefore it’s not just for visitors using the Chrome web browser.

For a business website, this doesn’t look very professional to have your website labelled as ‘Not secure’. That particular phrase doesn’t really inspire much confidence either does it? This is why we encourage all business owners to enable SSL on their websites.

Reason 3 – Google use HTTPS as a positive ranking signal

Google have been using HTTPS as a ‘very lightweight ranking signal’ for a while now. You get a tiny boost of improved ranking in search results compared to websites that only use HTTP. As you know, improved rankings in the search results usually means more visitors. Now whilst having HTTPS alone won’t push you to the top of search results, it is something that you can control and is worth doing.

Reason 4 – you can take advantage of brand new speed-enhancing technologies

With websites growing in complexity and content as websites become richer with content, web page loading times have been increasing. Now there’s now more imagery and text to download for every web page that’s visited. There are a range of technologies (e.g. HTTP/2) being developed for web servers and web browsers that will make loading websites even faster by exporting more efficient ways of transferring data. What appears to be emerging is that these technologies are relying on HTTPS to deliver content securely.

This means you’ll automatically get website speed improvements for your website just by having HTTPS, as web hosting companies (and web browsers) are upgraded to exploit these new technologies. This means your website visitors will be able to see the content on your website more quickly than ever!

Back to enabling SSL on your website…

Let’s Encrypt is a relatively new technology that allows you to have SSL certificates for your website for free. The big different with Let’s Encrypt compared to premium (paid for) SSL certificates is that the latter certificates usually come with an insurance policy. For a premium SSL certificate, you’ll usually need to go through a verification process with your business to verify your identity.

In a nutshell, premium (paid for) SSL certificates carry more weight from an authority perspective, and might be something you use for an ecommerce website. For a brochure website that you’re using to collect leads (e.g. for lead magnets, lead web forms) and blogging from, a simple Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate is perfect for your needs.

Want some help?

If you’d like help setting up an SSL certificate on your WordPress website, please get in touch.

The post The 4 big reasons why business owners really need HTTPS/SSL on their website appeared first on The WordPress Doctors.

However, coming up with a GREAT idea for YOUR lead magnet is tricky. So I’ve brainstormed 54 Lead Magnet ideas that you can swipe and deploy to use in your business. These ideas are grouped by business type, helping you to see how they could be used for a real business.

54 Lead Magnet Types

Before we get to the examples, what does a Lead Magnet look like? You’re probably used to the stereotypical PDF eBook lead magnet (which done well, still works just fine). However, you can also create:

• A live training webinar
• A pre-recorded training webinar
• A video series
• A downloadable software tool (e.g. a WordPress plugin)
• A template (e.g. spreadsheets, images, fill-in-the-blank documents)
• A printable reference card or cheatsheet
• A useful (PDF) eBook

Lead magnets should be:

• interesting
• useful (e.g. solving a problem)
• quick or easy to consume
• … did I mention interesting? (Whitepapers are NOT interesting!)

Lead Magnets usually work best in businesses where you offer a service, even more so when it’s a high value/cost service. (For businesses that sell low cost physical products, things are usually little different).

On to the ideas… these ideas could be any of the lead magnet types listed above… remember, different prospects like content in different formats!

Lead Magnet Ideas – for you to swipe and deploy

When reading each of these ideas, just think about the target prospect and WHY they might find that lead magnet interesting…

• Virtual Assistants (VAs)

1. “107 Projects You Can Outsource To A VA”
2. “How To Outsource Your First Project (For Control Freaks)”
3. “How To Set Up Your Email and Phone So That Someone Else Can Manage It For You”

• Accountants

4. “The 3-Tier Pricing Formula – How To Make More Profit From Your Existing Product Or Service”
5. “Your Essential Numbers In 20 Minutes – The Numbers You Need To Know To Maximise Your Take-home Cash”
6. “An Introduction To Tax – For Brand New Businesses And Startups”

• Business Growth Coach

7. “The 5-Step Framework For Crafting The Perfect Lifestyle Business”
8. “How To Craft A Business Where You Work Just 3 Days A Week”
9. “How To Hire Your First Ever Employee (And Not Get Sued)”

• Estate Agents

10. “Improve The Value Of Your Home With Just £1000”
11. “How To Maximise The Value Of Your Home In [name of town]”
12. “How To Sell Your Home In 6 Months Or Less”

• Child Behaviour Expert

13. “32 Things You Think Are Weird, But Are 100% Normal For Kids”
14. “3 Ways To Encourage Good Behaviour For 2 Year Olds”
15. “How To Tell A Child Off… Properly…”

• Personal Confidence Coach

16. “The 2 Minute Guide On Handling Difficult Colleagues At Work”
17. “Your Daily Confidence Challenge – Boost Your Confidence In Just 1 Minute Per Day”
18. “5 Easy Conversation Starers – How To Talk To Someone New (And NOT Mess It Up)”

• Personal Trainer

19. “Run A Mile Within 10 Weeks (Even If You Haven’t Been Running In Years)”
20. “A Healthy Breakfast, Lunch And Snack Menu For Lazy Office Workers”
21. “3 Easy Snacks You Can Make On Sunday For The Week Ahead”

• Osteopaths & Chiropractors

22. “7 Strategies For Avoiding Back Pain When You’re Doing The Gardening”
23. “5 Lunchtime Stretches For People With Stiff Backs”
24. “Easy 4-Step Guide For Reducing Pain When You ‘Pull’ Your Back”

• Relationship Coach

25. “6 Fun Date Ideas For Busy Couples In Their 40s”
26. “3 Ways To Communicate Without Starting An Argument”
27. “The 1 Minute Exercise For Couples To Improve The Way They Communicate”

• Business Process Consulting and Training

28. “3 Fill-in-the-blank Processes You Can Use To Train A New Employee”
29. “3 Example Processes That Saved These Businesses 13 Hours Per Week”
30. “The 3 Easy Processes You Can Swipe To Save You 2 Hours A Week”

• Business Productivity Coach

31. “Printable Motivation Guide – To Read When You’re Feeling Demotivated”
32. “An Example Productive Weekly Plan For Business Owners”
33. “How To Be Productive In Just 10 Minutes A Day”

• IT Consultants

34. “How To Safely And Properly Backup Your Office Documents In 30 Minutes Or Less”
35. “5 Really Boring Pieces of IT Technology That Will Save Your Business A Fortune”
36. “IT Guy Translation Guide – What they Say And What They Mean”

• Sales Trainer

37. “How To Build Rapport With A Prospect In 5 Minutes Or Less”
38. “2 Minute Guide To Being A Better Salesperson “
39. “An Example Sales Script For Selling To A Hot Lead…”

• Builder

40. “Checklist – What Decisions You Need To Make For Your New Extension”
41. “Easy 5 Minute Guide To Building A New Extension”
42. “27 Things You Can Do To Your Home Without Needing Planning Permission”

• Photographer

43. “21 Ideas For A Fun & Unique Family Photo…”
44. “51 Ideas For Photos Of Children As They Grow Up”
45. “6 Tricks For Overcoming The Fear Of Having Your Photo Taken”

• Social Media Trainer and Consultant

46. “Social Media – What’s Hot And What’s NOT in [year]”
47. “How To Use Facebook For Your Business – In Just 10 Minutes A Day”
48. “6 Interesting Content Ideas For You To Post On [Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest/LinkedIn]”

• Recruitment Consultant or CV Consultant

49. “The Pre-Interview Checklist (What To Do The Day Before Your Interview)”
50. “How To Craft Your CV in [year]”
51. “How To Check Your Social Media Profiles That Might Stop You From Getting That Job Offer”

• Customer Experience Design Consultancy

52. “The One PROVEN tweak you can make to your customer experience that DOUBLES the chance that customer will buy again…”
53. “Step By Step – See How This [Business Type] was transformed from Ordinary to Extraordinary…”
54. “8 Real-Life Examples Where An Amazing Customer Experience Boosted ROI For A Small Business…”

Want more ideas?

Send me an email, and let me know your business. I’ll then update this list with some ideas.

The post A massive list of Lead Magnet Ideas – for Business Owners… appeared first on The WordPress Doctors.

Like many things in business, there are often too many choices on what software and tools to use. As business owners, we get a little sucked into the hype and excitement of the latest products, just because they’re new, rather than knowing if they are actually suitable for what we need. In this article, I want to you a very simple and pragmatic guide to where you can host your videos, as well as explaining a few reasons WHY we don’t host videos on other platforms.

Throughout this article, my focus will be on the following elements of marketing to ensure that the video is serving it’s purpose in your business.

1. Building your list (of prospects and customers)
2. Building your audience and fans (e.g. Likes/Subscribers)
3. Ensuring videos are easy to upload, manage, and watch

A word about time…

For service-based business owners (such as accountants, osteopaths, copywriters, designers, consultants, coaches, vets, virtual assistants, etc) – the business owners I know are always short of time. Therefore this article focuses on video platforms that save TIME, but also do the job that we need them to do.

Whilst there will no doubt be some people (with too much time on their hands) who will criticise my suggestions in this article, I want you to appreciate that this article is trying to serve just one purpose. To be pragmatic. This article is NOT about finding the optimum (‘perfect’) solution for hosting videos.

Part 1 – Why we NEVER host videos DIRECTLY on your website hosting

There are ways of hosting video on the same server as your website. This is where you are uploading the videos to your actual website as files, rather than using something like YouTube or Vimeo. There are 3 reasons why we do not upload video directly to website hosting:

Reason A. It’s expensive

Videos are large files, and web server disk storage is comparatively expensive. That means you’re overpaying for hosting your videos.

Reason B. You waste bandwidth

For someone to watch your video, they are essentially downloading it. That means you use up your website bandwidth trying to play videos. Bandwidth is an allocation of “how much your visitors are allowed to download per month” from your website. You can quickly use up your bandwidth allocation by hosting videos on your website, meaning that you’ll run out before the end of the month. This results in either you paying extra fees OR your website essentially is down for a few days (when you use up your bandwidth allocation too early).

Reason C. (The most important reason). It’s a poor experience for your visitors.

Your website hosting is NOT optimised for hosting or playing videos (compared to YouTube or Vimeo). That means videos will take a LONG time to load, a LONG time to play (if at all), and your visitors will probably not bother watching your videos at all.

Part 2 – What makes video hosting (like YouTube or Vimeo) worthwhile?

All video hosting platforms invest in extremely clever technology that ensures that videos load quickly, work on all devices (e.g. phones), and the video still plays when mobiles are on a slower network (such as 3G or slower).

Fundamentally, they have technology that significantly increases the probability your video will play… and if it plays, there’s a much higher chance that your visitors will actually watch the video… which is the point of you publishing the video in the first place!

These video hosting platforms also use clever embedding tools. Basically this means you can use a small piece of code to put the video into a landing page or website. This code that allows a visitor to easily play the video. If you used any other platform (e.g. Amazon S3, your own hosting), then you need to add code for just playing videos. Put another way, video hosting platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo make it very easy to upload and create a way for your visitors to watch your videos.

Part 3 – When to use YouTube for your videos

In a nutshell, you use YouTube as a promotional video platform for attracting people to your content. In a similar way you rely on a regular search engine to attract visitors to your website.

From a business perspective, you can use YouTube to do the following that helps you to grow your business:

1. Building a following – this is where you have loyal subscribers (within the YouTube platform) who can choose to ‘subscribe’ to getting more videos from you.
2. Building your list – during your video, you give a call-to-action that sends the watcher to a landing page (where you can ask for their contact details in return for a lead magnet).

Due to the way that YouTube have created their platform, there are several features you can exploit to build your following and list.

• Advantage 1 – Attracting organic search traffic – this is where someone does a search on Google or YouTube for a solution to their problem. Therefore you can attract prospects by creating videos that solve the problems they are doing searches for.
• Advantage 2 – Instant Notifications – If your YouTube subscribers sign up for notifications (using the little bell in YouTube) then your followers get instant notifications when you publish a video. Essentially free promotion to your biggest fans you’ve just done something new.
• Advantage 3 – Related Videos – This works best when you’ve released lots and lots of videos, as your related videos will be promoted once someone has finished watching your video. You might also be recommended on other people’s videos. This means more time where your fans are watching your videos.

All of these advantages essentially help you get more exposure to you, your business and your content.

Even a ‘conventional business’ (accountants, osteopaths, copywriters, designers, consultants, coaches, vets, virtual assistants, etc) take advantage of this by creating videos relating to the work you do, but where they come to you for more help.

Part 4A – How to use videos on Facebook

Video on Facebook is a little more complicated, but thankfully easy to remember. If you’re doing ANY Facebook Ads at all to your Facebook page (e.g. this is the WP Doctors Facebook page), then it’s worth uploading your videos directly to Facebook.

Facebook favour their own platform for adverts, simply because they have the capability to monitor very closely what goes on in their platform. That means it’s cheaper and more effective if you promote your videos on Facebook using their platform. This means you get more views, and better reach, if you use Facebook for sharing your videos.

If you shared a link to YouTube link on Facebook, whilst you could promote it using Facebook Ads, expect to get:

• far fewer views (because it’s more effort for visitors to click to YouTube, compared to watching within Facebook)
• no functionality in Facebook to re-advertise to people who watched the video (called engagement retargeting)
• no data on how much of the video people watched (there’s no way for Facebook to access YouTube’s data)

As you can see, there’s quite a difference in how nice a video looks on Facebook compared to a link to YouTube that’s shared on a Facebook page:

By sharing a YouTube link on your Facebook Page, you could help bolster your YouTube Subscriber following, as some people may end up subscribing to videos on YouTube too… so there’s a benefit to doing both Facebook and YouTube links when sharing content on your Facebook page.

Part 4B – Captions on Facebook Videos

Since videos on Facebook begin by playing silently, it’s DEFINITELY worth adding subtitle/captions to your videos. You can use a very lost cost service such as Rev.com – where they will watch your video and type the captions for you for $1 a minute.

What does this mean? When your video begins to play silently, the text for what’s being said will show automatically on the video. That means if someone is watching your video without volume, they know what’s being said, and they may watch the whole video.

Some of your viewers may be hard of hearing, but additionally, they may be watching your videos somewhere where they don’t want to turn the sound on or they’re in a very noisy environment.

(When you order subtitles from Rev, you still need to manually add the subtitles to the video on Facebook once they’ve been done. It’s not difficult to do, but it is an extra step).

Part 5 – What platform to use for your Paid-For Training Content

When using video on training platforms that do not have their own video storage (e.g. if you’re using a WordPress plugin for a membership website), then you need a way to protect your videos from being accessed by somebody who hasn’t paid.

Therefore I recommend Vimeo on their Pro plan (which is their cheapest commercial plan at £14 a month. Their £5 a month Plus package is only for personal use).

It gives you the following functionality that you’ll want for your membership training websites:

• Domain-level privacy – this where you can ensure that only people on your website can watch the videos you’ve created (i.e. by paying you first)
• Prevent Downloads – you can ensure that your videos cannot be downloaded (i.e. ripped) and shared elsewhere. Again, protecting your content.
• Really sharp HD video quality – I’ve noticed that videos on Vimeo look particularly bright and sharp compared to other platforms, ideal for videos where detail is key (such as doing screen grabs)

As far as I’m aware, you don’t get the first 2 features with YouTube, which is why I’m recommending Vimeo for premium training content that you don’t want to be stolen.

This is what the privacy settings on Vimeo look like:

Part 6 – What platform to use for your Landing Pages

In addition to the privacy features mentioned above, you also want your videos on Landing Pages to be really simple. You don’t want the fancy controls and labels you get on a Vimeo (or YouTube) video by default. Again, with Vimeo Pro, you can switch off some of the controls to reduce distractions on your landing page.

For example. the latter video is much cleaner and simpler compared to the first video. You can actually go further and remove the progress bar if you wish. It’s VERY quick to do this for a video on Vimeo, and means that a visitor to your landing page is going to watch the video and not be distracted by the controls that appear on the video.

Part 7 – What platform to use for your website?

This one is up to you.

• Either use YouTube if you’re boosting your subscriber following (as per part 3 above)
• or Vimeo if you want to control where the video is shared (part 5 above) and what it looks like (part 6) on your website!

Part 8A – What platforms to avoid – Amazon S3

If you’re not technical, then Amazon S3 isn’t right for you.

Amazon S3 is just a storage platform. For videos to load quickly, you also need something like CloudFront. Without being too technical, CloudFront is a system that works with Amazon S3 to make content and videos load quickly from servers that are geographically closer to you. (Read up on CDNs if you want to know more). Then for Amazon S3, you also need a special player that works with Amazon S3 too. Oh, and lots can go wrong if you don’t set up everything correctly.

There’s lots of techie faffing to get a single video uploaded and set up to play. As a business owner, it’s a poor use of time when we have so little available as it is. Even as a techie, I don’t use Amazon S3 for video, as it’s just too time-consuming.

Part 8B – What platforms to avoid – Wistia

Once upon a time, I also recommended Wista. However, that’s now changed, as they changed their pricing around 2016/2017 and made it much more expensive. Whilst their platform is genuinely VERY powerful and very easy to use, their entry price point ($99 a month v.s. Vimeo’s £14 a month) makes it too expensive for business owners who are just dabbling, which is why I’m not recommending it here. If you’re doing very advanced marketing using video, then you might want to take a look. Otherwise I suggest you use Vimeo.

Part 9 – The Summary

Here’s a quick reference summary of what I’ve recommended above.

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